Legal filesharing with Weedshare

April 12, 2004 10:04 AM

Where's the WE in itunes? Weedshare is a filesharing service/company that rewards users for sharing music files. Unfortunately, they're Windows only (and use DRM but with good reason), but still interesting...
posted by dobbs (8 comments total)

I _love_ this from the FAQ:

Q: Do you have a photo of a girl with headphones on your site?
A: No.
posted by Flat Feet Pete at 10:15 AM on April 12, 2004

Nice sense of humor. Very cool that you can now resell your digital media. 3 free previews. DRMDRMDRMDRMDRM...

I for one welcome our Microsoft promoting overlords...
posted by psychotic_venom at 10:41 AM on April 12, 2004

Good step in a good direction I guess, expecially the fact the (apparently) it rewards individual distributors ; a little too company centric for my tastes (Microsoft DRM)

year 2008 " In other news , Microsoft announced DRM3 which is backward not compatible with DRM2 and DRM1. Record companies are throwing in a free Britney Spears album if you decide to rebuy your songs encoded in DRM1"

*sound of head smashing on the keyboard*
posted by elpapacito at 10:47 AM on April 12, 2004

I'd expect to see more of this stuff. Microsoft may have a shitty DRM model, but they've made it easy for developers to incorporate it into their own business processes. Apple, on the other hand, has a better model, but refuses to license it.

Deja vu, anyone?
posted by mkultra at 10:56 AM on April 12, 2004

There's a rumor circulating that CD Baby is in talks with Weed to provide indie musicians with automatic Weedification if they desire. If this happens, I'm definitely going to try making some of my own music available as Weed files. But I refuse to restrict listeners to WMA, so I'll always provide MP3s regardless.
posted by scottandrew at 11:58 AM on April 12, 2004

Isn't the CD Baby library already up for anyone to buy at audiolunchbox?
posted by lotsofno at 12:19 PM on April 12, 2004

lotsofno, yes, pretty much all of the CDBaby library is available at audiolunchbox, Lindows, iTunes and MusicNet. Pending the individual artists' okay, of course.

I've heard nothing about Weedshare, and the digital distribution concept is still fairly new at CDBaby, but if Weedshare is as straightforward as it seems, I wouldn't be surprised if thse rumors were true.

Any other indie-based online retailers making a similar jump? Orchard? Orange Spot? Reverb? The labels themselves?
posted by chicobangs at 2:40 PM on April 12, 2004

You can download weed now? Anybody got a torrent link for that?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 12:45 AM on April 13, 2004